Building a small webserver

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knawlejj

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 29, 2007
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Hey guys, just looking for a little help. I've been out of the hardware loop the last 5-6 months because of a massive amount of work and school starting recently.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc

This PC will be used by the CIT division of the college I attend (Loras College, 1600 kids) and just used to store files from students/professors based on the courses. It is also for a small project for my Computer Organization and Architecture class. Essentially it is a web server.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

$700, taxes and shipping included.

3) Where do you live?

United States

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.

Things we need:
CPU - Probably AMD. If you can persuade me otherwise and keep within the budget, feel free to do so. I'm an Intel fan, so no qualms there.
RAM - 4-8GB of DDR2
Hard Drives - The professor and I discussed it, and we're only going to use 3TB.
Motherboard - AMD Compliant, ATX with on board video.

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

Using an old Lian Li case, 600W OCZ PSU.

6) Will you be overclocking?

No

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?

We have 2 x 17 inch monitors, but the professor said we had no use for 2. We're sticking with 1 of the 17 inch monitor.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

A month, give or take a few days, but getting a list of parts now is ideal.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.

Ideally, we will be running RAID over the 3 hard drives we want.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?

We will be running Linux.
 
Which specific model PSU do you have?

Which RAID configuration do you plan on using? Do you need/want a separate HDD for the OS?
 
Guy above me has some good ?'s too.

I would look at something like this

Motherboard Supermicro G33 Motherboard 139.99

Intel E6500 2.93Ghz 94.99

8 Gigs Corsair Ram 129.98

WD Black 1TB drives 284.97

For a grand total of 649.93 shipped

If you use I highly recommend you find a hardware raid card that will work with you nix distro. I've been bit by trying to use fake raid in production. I don't know how hard your little server is going to be hit but I like overkill for anything in production. I would like to make the argument towards enterprise class hard disks too but thats just not practical in your budget.


Oh and Hello from Cedar Falls
 
No disrespect, but the above build is not worth the money, especially when you can get the following for much less:

$120 - AMD Athlon II X2 240 & Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H combo deal
$57 - A-DATA 2x2GB DDR2 800 dual channel kit
$50 - Corsair CX400 400W PSU
$320 - Four Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB HDDs (at $80 each)
$50 - Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB HDD (as OS HDD)
=====
$547 - Subtotal (not including shipping, taxes, or rebates)

I'm not a big fan of the OCZ PSU series -- I've heard too many horror stories about them -- so I included up a better quality PSU in the Corsair CX400. If this computer is going to be a true web server, you don't really need more than 4GB of RAM; but it's cheap enough that you could buy a second pair, if you really wanted to.

You want three 1+TB hard drives, but you plan on using RAID 1? RAID, in general, performs better with "matched" pairs of drives, so you should be able to pick up four inexpensive drives, like the Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB HDD. The motherboard I included has onboard RAID 1, which is good enough for your needs. (Do you have a backup system in place?)

As for an OS HDD, you should pick up a single- or dual- 320GB platter HDD like the Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB HDD or the Caviar Black 640GB HDD. Either drive would outperform your 80GB HDDs.
 
Didn't you say you were going to use about 3TB of storage?

My suggestions:

GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-UD4H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128384

Athlon II X4 620:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103706

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory (x2 for 8GB):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166

1.5TB HDs - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5 (x3 for RAID5):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

$703.94
 
Also, are the older 80GB drives SATA or PATA? If SATA, I would just use those for the OS in RAID1.
 
Bad idea. The HDDs that you and I recommended could each outperform those 80GB HDDs, especially when you consider their age. Those 80GB drives would be better served in a RAID 0 configuration... but with my build, you'd need to add a SATA or a RAID add-on card.
 
No disrespect to the builds above. You guys are right your builds are the better value. But mine is centered on reliability up time and performance. I cringe when I see consumer hardware being used in production. My build isn't what I would like either. I have to do it too working for a university (desktops being passed off for servers though those tend to be none mission critical) they always want more for less but I get nervous at consumer hardware being in a system that people are supposed to relay on. But then again IONO what the main goal of this project if its proof of concept anything is fine.

Just my .02 cents I hope I didn't step on anybodies toes.
 
tiraides said:
Bad idea. The HDDs that you and I recommended could each outperform those 80GB HDDs, especially when you consider their age. Those 80GB drives would be better served in a RAID 0 configuration... but with my build, you'd need to add a SATA or a RAID add-on card.
Click to expand...

Of course. But he might not be concerned with his 80GB drives being a bit slower than newer drives. Unless it is going to be serving hundreds of users at once, will it really matter that much?
 
DeChache said:
No disrespect to the builds above. You guys are right your builds are the better value. But mine is centered on reliability up time and performance. I cringe when I see consumer hardware being used in production. My build isn't what I would like either. I have to do it too working for a university (desktops being passed off for servers though those tend to be none mission critical) they always want more for less but I get nervous at consumer hardware being in a system that people are supposed to relay on. But then again IONO what the main goal of this project if its proof of concept anything is fine.
Click to expand...

+1

Also, don't use fakeraid with Linux, you're better off with software RAID.
 
Thank you much for all the replies, I'll look through these configs later tonight. If anybody else has anything to contribute, feel free!
 
What's the load going to be like on this server?

DeChache said:
No disrespect to the builds above. You guys are right your builds are the better value. But mine is centered on reliability up time and performance. I cringe when I see consumer hardware being used in production. ...
Click to expand...

I cringe when people are building their own servers for production. Its much easier, cheaper, and more reliable to go with a pre-built like Dell or HP.
 
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